News and Updates

1. Just in case you were wondering whether the climate isn’t what it used to be, in the last few weeks here in Our Little Town we were narrowly missed by the first tornado in Wisconsin’s history, then saw the temperature hit 73F (23C) before plunging to 13F (-11C) in less than 18 hours, the largest temperature swing ever recorded in that short a time in this state. We had about two weeks of winter back in mid-January and since then it’s been spring. Currently we’re back up to around 73F again – a temperature we normally see in May rather than the first weekend in March. We put the rabbits outside and opened up all the windows. Folks, the climate isn’t changing. The climate has changed. All we’re doing now is trying to figure out what happens next and mitigate the damages.

2. I hope those third-quarter profit statements and the thrill of Owning The Libs was worth it to all the right-wing fools who made sure that nothing would be done to prevent this back when we had the time to do so, because there is no going back.

3. In less critical news, I now have a lovely new work mug for my tea. For a long time I had one with the best line from Game of Thrones on it (“There is only one god and his name is death, and there is only one thing that we say to death: not today”) and I do still have it, but my brother gave me a new mug for my birthday back in December. It has a bright colorful design and underneath that it says “Joey No-Nuts” in cheerful letters. The fact that it is advertising an allergen-free bakery in Hoboken NJ rather than some doomed side character in in a 1970s Mafia film makes it just that much better. So far nobody has commented on it, but the year is young.

4. This may well be the year where I don’t even get to a dozen books for my annual list. I’m currently about halfway through my third book – a mark I usually hit by MLK Day – and honestly it just doesn’t look like it will get any better anytime soon. We’ll see. At least they’re good books.

5. On the plus side, we did finally send out the Christmas letters. Before March, even! One takes one’s victories where one finds them.

6. It always grievously bothers me when I screw up as an advisor, because it’s someone else’s life path at stake. It happens – you can’t avoid it, in the long run, as we are fallible creatures we humans. But it bothers me. I try to do what I can to fix things, but still. It does keep me up at night.

7. One of my students recently turned in an essay on the 1920s that spent a fair amount of time discussing the Ku Klutz Klan and that is the only way I will refer to that organization from now on. I have this mental image now of all those hateful little bigots with their pointy little costumes flapping behind them as they scurry about colliding with trees and falling down embankments trying to avoid the retribution of the just, and I treasure this, I really do.

8. Every few weeks I get yet another nastygram from yet another account we have about them not being paid because we had to get new credit cards in December thanks to a fraudulent charge that appeared there and I’d forgotten to make the changes for them. Everything is so linked now. So I go to their website or call the number and get everything verified that yes indeed this is the proper procedure and not a pathway to yet more fraudulent charges and then I cross that one off the list until the next one appears.

9. I have been trying to find information on an ancestor of mine to see if I can get to the bottom of a story that has at least three alternative narratives for what might have happened – each funnier than the next, really, and all of them absolutely plausible if you knew the people involved – but so far there is surprisingly little on the usual websites. Honestly, this is also absolutely plausible given the people involved.

10. On top of everything else my cousin and I are now working on another Long Term Family Project and we’re having a grand time of it even though neither of us really has the time for it at all but that’s the nature of these projects I suppose. We’ll see how it turns out!